Monday, 26 October 2009

What a weekend!

When I decided to go to university, I wasn't really prepared for how different a learning style it is. There are the lectures, but other than that, and the odd items which get put up onto our Web area, it becomes essentially a teach yourself thing. You do have to be very strict with yourself, and I'm finding that with midterm exams looming, I'm beginning to struggle.

As much as I am loving the university experience, I'm not the kind of person who finds it easy to sit down and do work under her own steam, especially after a pretty awful day, and I'm finding myself struggling to put in the necessary personal study time - I'm lucky if I find 2 hours a week of study.

This is probably going to become a big issue for me unless I really start to get to work on it, so this week I'm setting myself a target of at least re-reading and writing up my notes from my lectures. I've started a little glossary thing at the back of my notebook for anything I need to look up on my own - anything I don't understand from the lectures, so I'm hoping to be able to get that sorted out too.

Hopefully, if I start out reasonable, I'll be able to build it up enough to get a decent amount of study in, and hopefully pass my exams, be happy that I'm doing enough work, and maybe still have a bit of a social life.

On a completely unrelated note (apart from maybe the amount of study time I missed), I had a great weekend. I got tickets to a gig bought for me for Friday night. I hadn't heard of The Dead Weather before, but I looked them up the week before I went, and after hearing just two of their songs I went out and bought the album! Its unusual for me to buy CDs. Usually I'll stick with watching youtube or something, but this group just struck something with me.

So I went all the way to Leeds Academy to watch them and boy was it worth it. It was an incredible night, and well worth the journey. It was the best live show I've seen so far by miles; they seem to be one of the few groups who sound just as good (if not better) live as they do on the CD. We managed to find our way right to the front and I even managed to take a few decent snaps - Here's one I managed to take...

I went to church on Saturday night. I was raised a Roman Catholic, but with one grandparent Methodist, and the other Catholic, I've usually had my choice of which church to go to.

A few years ago I stopped going to church on a regular basis, and now tend to be a rare visitor. I find it quite sad really and wish I did go more often, but I think its more of a comfort and familiarity thing than anything.

I've always beleived that as long as a person is basically good, God is happy, and I don't beleive that going to church every sunday just for the sake of it makes you any better a person than someone who leads a good life and doesn't go to church.

However, I remember going to church as a kid and the place being busy, and full of life. Even the Saturday evening services drew in at least half a church full. I found it quite upsetting this week though. I barely recognised the place. There were perhaps 6 of us, no hymns, and the church itself was freezing. What a change it was from what I remember. Instead of it being a comforting, warm, happy place with music and smiles as I remember, it had become a quite, sad place, and the size of the building just seemed to point out how few of us there was.

On the way out everyone was shuffling out looking at their feet and I risked a smile at someone I recognised from school.